The Indigenous People of Biafra on Thursday asked a former Head of State, Yakubu Gowon, to stop making provocative and false statements against the late Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu-Ojukwu and the civil war. Gowon had recently in an interview with a private television station said Ojukwu’s lies caused the civil war in the country between 1967 and 1970.
He alleged that civil war broke because Ojukwu went on television and gave his account of the Aburi Accord, thereby deceiving the people of Biafra to going into war against the Federal Government. But IPOB in a statement by its Media and Publicity Officer, Emma Powerful, described Gowon’s comment as “total falsehood from the mouth of a hater.” The group accused Gowon of having the penchant of distorting history, especially as it concerned the civil war. They expressed worry that Gowon, at 83, could lie against the dead (Ojukwu) who could not defend himself in the circumstance.
The statement partly read, “We are IPOB, we won’t allow distortion of historical facts and neither will we allow the denigration of the revered memory of our all-time hero, Dim Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu. He remains, till date, the only man that tried to bring genuine independence, not mere flag independence, to an African nation.”
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